Jennifer Garner & David Tennant Talk New HBO Series ‘Camping’ & Why There Won’t Be A Season 2 [Interview]

Leave it to Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner to make you never want to go camping again. The “Girls” creators’ new HBO show, “Camping,” adapted from Julia Davis‘s eponymous British series, boasts an impressive ensemble including Jennifer Garner, David Tennant, Juliette Lewis, Ione Skye, Brett Gelman, and Bridget Everett.

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Tennant plays Walt, the passive patriarch, and Garner plays Kathryn, the controlling matriarch, who together embark on a camping trip with friends and family to celebrate Walt’s 45th birthday. Recently, I sat down with Garner and Tennant to discuss the series, working with the show’s cast and crew, playing against type, Jodie Whittaker‘s “Doctor Who,” and more!

What intrigued you about this project?

JENNIFER GARNER: I was intrigued by the script, itself, and by Jenni and Lena’s cleverness and capacity for words. And then, there were the characters and how deeply disturbed they all are, in their own words, how complicated their relationships are, and how they slowly unravel, as time goes on.

DAVID TENNANT: Yeah, I was drawn to the people involved. That was a big draw, along with the type of show that it is. It’s not like anything I had done before. That’s always appealing. And there was working with Jen [Garner]. It was a combination of all those things. I read the script and went, “Oh, this is good. I’d quite like to do this. I’m glad they’re asking. Yes, please!”

Were either of you familiar with the original British series?

TENNANT: I didn’t see it, at the time. I don’t know how I quite missed it, but when this became something that I was involved in, I checked it out and I absolutely loved it. It’s recognizably the same show, but it’s tonally quite different.

GARNER: I watched the British version before I read the script, and it was brilliant and I loved it, but they went so much further with Kathryn that I thought, “I don’t know if we can do this in America.” Actually, Jenni and Lena toned her down and softened her quite a bit, and gave you reasons why, wherein the British version, you didn’t get that.

TENNANT: I think Julia Davis, who I love and I think is brilliant, is a very different writer to Jenni and Lena. Jenni and Lena play to their strengths, so it’s about the minutiae of interpersonal relationships. That’s what they’re great at. Whereas Julia likes to take things beyond, into a macabre Grand-Guignol thing. They start to divert more and more, as the series goes on. The finale of the British one is very unlike our finale.

TENNANT: They were not trying to be the same show. I think Julia sure inspired this one, rather than being a slavish remake.

GARNER: Oh, definitely.

David, what’s it like to play the most normal guy that you’ve probably ever played?

TENNANT: It’s quite a relief. I spend a lot of my time playing characters where I have to pretend to be much cooler and more suave than I really am. It’s very nice just to lean back and be a little bit of a dork.

GARNER: You seem totally like you’re playing yourself.

TENNANT: It came so easily. There was no stress for it, at all.

Jen, we’ve only seen four episodes and, so far, Kathryn is not very empathetic. Does the show get any lighter on her character, as the season goes on? Do we get any more context to help us understand why she is the way she is?

GARNER: To me, you do. I think that they really mete out those moments carefully, and they were quite strict with me because I was constantly trying to button a scene with a smile or rub Duncan Joiner’s back, who plays our son Orvis, or something that would soften it, in some way. They were just like, “No! That’s you. That’s not Kathryn. Don’t go for it. You have to stay strong.” But by the end, I think you’ve peeked under enough leaves that you can see who’s hiding behind the tree, and you start to understand who they used to be together and who she was to her friends, and why she is so tough to handle now.

Do you know women like Kathryn?

GARNER: Yeah, I know women with some of Kathryn’s attributes.

Did they inspire you, with this role?

GARNER: Of course! That’s why I can’t really talk about it too much. That’s gotten me in trouble before.